Underestimation explains the success of many politicians. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush come to mind. Overestimation is the mother of failure, and it may help explain President Obama’s sagging popularity right now.

Yes, though the sagging popularity will also lower future expectations.

1. Given that you were aware of the conduct for which CIA interrogators are now being investigated and possibly prosecuted, and you at least tacitly approved of such conduct, will you ask President Obama to pardon the interrogators?

2. Since you were aware of what the CIA interrogators were doing yet remained silent, are you at all complicit in their conduct?

Speaker Pelosi, assuming that you reject the IG’s report (and Leon Panetta’s assertion that the CIA told congress the truth in 2002) please respond to the following:

1. When you discovered that you were lied to in September 2002, did you confront Director Tenet? If not, why not?

2. Were the CIA personnel who lied to you in September 2002 fired and prosecuted? If not, why not?

3. When you discovered that you were lied to in September 2002 did you insist upon Congressional hearings? If not, why not?

There are more. But don’t expect the press to ask them. They’re only a watchdog when it’s a Republican in office. With Dems, they’re lapdogs.

…a large element of the Obama-press rift is attributable to disappointment and frustration. The media is not simply covering Obama’s sinking ship of state, they are panicking about it.

But there are other factors at work. For starters, Obama isn’t very nice to the media. It may sound petty, but his obvious and frequent contempt for what they do must be irksome to reporters who fancy themselves to be indispensable elements in the Obama revolution. He spits his disdain for the “24-hour news cycle.” The press is told to buzz off — there is no news to be had on his Martha’s Vineyard vacation (before the eye-popping decision to name a special prosecutor to go after CIA operatives). And for all the promises to be “transparent,” this White House, and Robert Gibbs specifically, seems to be one of the least forthcoming in recent memory.

In short, the Obama team has shown the media little respect — and the press corps has begun to bristle at the high-handed treatment.

I’ll take it seriously when I start seeing some serious questions from the WH press corps (you know, on things like this, or this (who needs Chavez when we have the US State Department?)), and actually doing analysis of the legislation and reporting on the issues, instead of the horse race. Like the Obama White House itself, they too remain in campaign mode.

An unpleasant smell attends the Department of Justice decision to not prosecute New Mexico Governor (and Obama ally) Bill Richardson. Fresh on the heels of the Department declining to prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation, while appointing a special prosecutor for CIA interrogators, the appearance of a politicized Justice Department is being created.

It’s not like this wasn’t perfectly predictable. Given his history, the Republican Senators that went along with the Holder nomination should be ashamed. They betrayed those who voted for them to prevent such things.

Often, people post follow-up comments to fix problems with previous comments (such as here), and often, in doing so, they wish for an edit feature.

In order to have a comment feature that only allowed editing of your own comments (and surely, you wouldn’t want one that allowed anyone to edit anyone’s right…?), I’d have to set up a login of some kind, whether Google, or otherwise. I’ve never done that, and have always maintained a pretty open and freewheeling comments section here, and overall, it’s worked all right. I know that I don’t like to have to log in (or worse, set up an entire account) to comment elsewhere, and when I have to do so, it usually results in my not bothering.